I had a very restless night.  Very unusual as I generally just fall asleep while it is still light.  Don’t think I slept much at all.   Eventually I guess I do sleep cause I wake up about 2 hours later than usual and get on the trail at about 6:30.  I only have two miles until I actually enter the town of Cascade Locks.  Right on the trail and the location of the “Bridge of the Gods” which is a bridge across the Columbia River and entry into Washington.

I am really not feeling like hiking at all.  Yesterday was a killer and as I walk the 2 miles, I am actually praying for God to give me a sign if he wants me to get off the trail.   There is nothing wrong with me at this point other than I am tired but I ask anyway.  I always start my day by texting my family that I have started to hike via the InReach device that gives me texting capability and allows everyone to know exactly where I am.  Every 10 minutes it sends my location to the cloud and records it for anyone to see.  I then start hiking and go through a series of prayers as I walk and end with a personal prayer to God the Almighty Father of thanks and praise and requests.  This morning I went directly to the personal prayer.  So as I am hiking the InReach dings indicating I have received a message.  The InReach is on my pack and I can’t see it without taking the pack off and I decide to wait till I get to town to read the message.  There is a family dining restaurant in the town that I plan on stopping at and having a regular breakfast.

I arrive at Cascade Locks and find the dining room which is really right by the trail and the Bridge of the Gods.  Going to have to research why the bridge has that name.  Looks like a nice bridge for sure but Bridge of the Gods!!???  Anyway I take off my pack to read the InReach message and the InReach screen will not turn on.  The light is flashing indicating I have a message but it won’t turn on to let me read it and it won’t turn off either.  It is just not responding at all.  2 miles ago it worked and allowed me to send a message and start tracking and now it does not work.  Well,  I asked for a sign and this seems like a pretty darn clear one.  I won’t hike without the InReach and it mysteriously stopped working.

At this point the PCT is really in civilization and I have phone service BUT Lenora is up in Packwood Washington and they don’t have AT&T service in Packwood.  You just can’t make this stuff up.  So I am in service and she is out.  I just have to laugh.   The kids know where she is staying and have the number and call the hotel and the hotel gets Lenora and she calls me on the hotel phone.  I ask her to come and get me and she starts on her way.  Its another 3 hour drive to pick me up but all on major roads.   I have texted her the story of the SIGN but she has not really received that text yet and on the phone I just tell her we will talk when she gets here.

While I am waiting I have breakfast and then start querying the internet about what to do when you InReach just suddenly won’t turn on for no reason.  Turns out that you have to push two keys simultaneously for 10 seconds to perform a reset on the device.  Before doing the above internet query, being the smart guy that I am, I figured there had to be some way to forcing the device off.  I tried multiple keys for multiple seconds but I never did get the right combination.

Below is a picture of the InReach device:

The proper key combination to do a soft reset on the device is to simultaneously hold the X key and the down arrow for 10 seconds.  After doing the soft reset the device would turn back on and I could see the message from Lenora telling me to have a good hike.   So was it a sign to stop??  Was it just a coincidence??  Never happened before in 4 years of hiking.

The Bridge of the Gods is a steel truss cantilever bridge that spans the Columbia River between Cascade Locks, Oregon, and Washington state near North Bonneville. It is approximately 40 miles  east of Portland, Oregon, and 4 miles upriver from the Bonneville Dam. It is a toll bridge operated by the Port of Cascade Locks. The bridge was completed by the Wauna Toll Bridge Company and opened in 1926 at a length of 1,127 feet. The higher river levels resulting from the construction of the Bonneville Dam required the bridge to be further elevated in 1940 and extended to its current length of 1,856 feet. The Columbia River Bridge Company of Spokane, Washington, acquired ownership of the bridge in 1953 for $735,000.  The Port of Cascade Locks Commission now operates the bridge. The bridge is named after the historic geologic feature also known as Bridge of the Gods. The Pacific Crest Trail crosses the Columbia River on the Bridge of the Gods, and the lowest elevation of the trail is on this bridge.

So what was the historic geologic feature: The Bridge of the Gods was a natural dam created by the Bonneville Slide, a major landslide that dammed the Columbia River near present-day Cascade Locks, Oregon in the Pacific Northwest of the United States. The river eventually breached the bridge and washed much of it away, but the event is remembered in local legends of the Native Americans as the Bridge of the Gods.

So there are some fires in Washington.  One of them has closed the PCT near Packwood Washington.  So my current plan is this:  I am going to continue hiking.  I am going to go from White Pass near Packwood and head north.  When and if I make it to Canada, if there is still time, I will come back to Packwood and head south towards the Bridge of the Gods and complete Washington.

IPhone: 4 miles, 8692 steps